The Future of Governance: A Radical Introduction to Law

This book offers a radically different introduction to law, one that reflects the challenges and opportunities presented by the rapid technological developments of our time.

Traditionally, law has been about historic principles and rules and their application to a particular set of facts; and courts, judges, and disputes have been central to the legal enterprise. Against this approach, this book highlights four radical and revisionist ideas: by bringing modern technologies into the foreground; by presenting law as one particular mode of governance in a larger picture of governance that now includes technological modalities; by insisting that we have to think outside the traditional doctrinal box to engage with a broad range of governance questions; and by emphasising that human communities cannot flourish without good governance to which both lawyers and law are central. These four radical threads are woven into a discussion of the modern landscape of law, and together they offer a distinctly contemporary contribution to the quest for good governance. The challenge for lawyers now, the book maintains, is to contribute to thinking, both locally and globally, about how we take advantage of the opportunities presented by the newest technology, without compromising the essential conditions for human life and co-existence, and without losing what we value in law’s governance.

This book is aimed at students who are studying law at university and legal academics, and others, interested in the current and future impact of technology on law.

Roger Brownsword is Professor in Law at King’s College London and at Bournemouth University, Honorary Professor at Sheffield University, and Visiting Professor at City University Hong Kong.